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staged an avant-garde show in front of a stunned audience, more used to the singers of the National Instrumental Ensemble, fully clothed in ceremonial wrappers. His was a one-man show called Ginza-Africa (Ginza being a trendy district of Tokyo), during which he completely stripped and threw a full frontal into the bargain. Although Fumio was of not much use that particular evening, the two journalists were impressed by the dishes served up by the former cook of the Finnish embassy, the high point being the crabs stuffed with snails. They published articles as excellent as the meal. As a result, Rosélie sold two of her paintings to the owner of the Hotel Paradiso, on the seafront, who hung them in the lobby and forced his reluctant guests to enthuse over them.
    The color of the air changed. Rosélie stood up, followed by Manuel Desprez. Nowhere was safe nowadays. Only the day before yesterday a group of tourists had been attacked outside the District Six Museum. He offered to escort her home. Deep down she knew only too well what the neighbors would say if, three months after the death of Stephen, she came home with a white man.
    I’m telling you, they’re all whores.
    â€œBlack and Asian women are alike, they’re machines, they can’t tell one man from another.”
    Cowardly, Rosélie declined his offer.
    â€œCan I come and see you one of these days?” he insisted.
    She thought she hadn’t heard right. What type of Good Samaritan was this who took an interest in a morose, destitute widow of a left-handed marriage?
    â€œI’d like to see your paintings,” he stammered, taken aback by her look of surprise. “As I told you, my sister has a gallery. Sometimes I work as an art dealer for her.”
    Pity, nothing but pity!
    As night fell a cool wind settled on their shoulders, a treacherous wind blowing in from the merciless Atlantic and Indian oceans, that swept through the streets, sending dust and grease papers flying. In the background, the massive Table Mountain, like an evil spirit, overshadowed the city.
    Rosélie had been reluctant to move. She had sort of got used to New York. Why set off again? But Stephen was a stubborn man. Once he had something fixed in his mind, he was not afraid to make bold comparisons. After seven years in New York, he argued, to see South Africa after apartheid would be like going back in time. Going back to when the United States had just finished muzzling its police dogs and the fight for civil rights was over. They would have a front-row seat to observe how communities, once bitter enemies, learn how to live together. Apparently, in South Africa the experience was particularly remarkable. Not the slightest drop of blood spilled. But no agrarian reform either. No redistribution of land. No Africanization along the lines currently meant. In Durban, Jo’burg, and Cape Town the statues of the colonials remained firmly in place on horseback, just like in the good old days. Rosélie had been incapable of holding out against such an onslaught. She had laid her canvases, like recalcitrant schoolgirls, in boxes custom-made by a carpenter on 125th Street.
    She hated Cape Town as soon as she left the airport, while sensing inside her a strange fascination. For towns are like humans. Their singular personality attracts, repels, or disconcerts. Cape Town possessed the brilliant sparkle and hardness of rock salt; its gardens and parks, the remarkable roughness of kelp. While Stephen admired pell-mell the mountains, the gnarled pines bent in two, the mass of flowers, the dazzling blue sky, and the endless expanse of ocean, she was blinded by both this splendor and the hideousness of the shacks that mushroomed all around her. No place had been more marked by its history. Never had she felt so denied, excluded, and relegated out of sight because of her color.
    Outside the Victoria Cinema, the line was growing longer. A group of out-of-towners,